


alight, alone

by epiattic



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Universe, Fire, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Suspense, Trapped, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Violence, Voltron General Big Bang 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-14 11:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11781804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiattic/pseuds/epiattic
Summary: It’s a simple mission. Sneak in, sneak out. Keith and Lance should be on the Galra base for an hour tops, and then back on the Castle-ship where they can keep pretending that whatever’s going on between them isn’t.Of course it’s not that simple. And of course Keith gets trapped on a Galra base with just his bayard, Lance, and no idea when their rescue is coming.Iftheir rescue is coming.





	1. PART 1

**Author's Note:**

> oh man y’all, this fic has been a wild ride for me. i actually first started it last october, dropped it for several months, and then decided to pick it back up for the voltron big bang. it’s also 17k words longer than i expected it to be. and now it’s been blessed enough to have accompanying art by wuhkie, who was also my very kind beta.
> 
> obviously this was written before s3 (and some parts of it before s2!) so not everything matches up to current events. just pretend that everything is happy and okay.

“Do you feel that?”

“Feel  _ what _ ?” 

“ _ That _ !” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“ _ That _ !!!”

“Use your words, Lance.”

They’ve been on this ship for nine goddamn minutes and Keith doesn’t know if he’s going to survive until the tenth. 

“Okay, I  _ swear _ ,” Lance says, dialing his voice volume back from “slightly panicked” to “indoor,” probably because of the Galra sentries that could be well on their way to happening across them any minute. “It feels like we’re moving? Also I can’t sense Blue anymore.” 

“We  _ are _ moving,” Keith says. “We’re in  _ space _ .”

“No, no, no, like we’re  _ actually going somewhere _ . Acceleration and all that shit, you know?” Lance peeks around a corner, bayard at the ready, but finds no reason to use it. “Plus what about Blue?” 

_ You’re imagining things _ , is what Keith is about to tell him, but he’s suddenly very distracted by having to haul Lance around a corner  _ again. _ He’s focusing too much on whatever’s coming out of his own mouth and not nearly enough on what’s going on around him, as usual. Keith grabs him around the waist and swings him against the wall, where he flattens himself too. He doesn’t breathe until he hears the echoing  _ click-clack  _ of Galra shoes against the cold metal floor disappear. He knows Lance isn’t breathing either because Keith is scared to take his arm away from where it’s trapping Lance across the chest. He imagines that if he did Lance would bounce back like a spring and reveal their presence. 

“This mission requires quick-thinking and stealth,” is what Shiro said to him when they’d gathered to discuss it. Keith’s at least confident that he’s got the quick-thinking thing down. Or at least quick-acting. Stealth? Arguable. He’s a little hit-or-miss with that.  

But Lance? When it comes to stealth, Lance is all miss. 

He’s straightening himself up now, fussing with something on the side of his bayard and grumbling a complaint under his breath. Can’t even stay quiet for fifteen ticks. Keith wants to be mad at Shiro for sending him out here, but he knows that he deserves to be on this  mission. It’s Lance that’s the problem. 

“Maybe it’s because you think that way that we’re here right now,” Lance snaps, and Keith realizes he said that last part out loud. “Or maybe it’s because—”

“Shut  _ up _ .” Keith doesn’t have the time for this right now. In and out. No problem. That’s the goal. It’s actually been eleven minutes now and he’s surprised he’s still sane. But it won’t be much longer if he can help it. 

_ Act now, think later. _

Keith starts off down the corridor again without another word. 

The Galra, for all their superior technology and ten thousand years of ruling the universe, could probably use some tighter security features. Humans definitely have them beat in that respect at least. Keith can’t imagine that they’re the first life form to come up with security cameras. And he’s seen some of the ways this Galra tech works. It’s kind of ridiculous that their floors can’t just pick up on unauthorized shoes or something. 

_ Arrogance _ , Keith realizes.  _ There’s not too much out here to even sneak onto their ships _ .

“Are you seriously telling me you can feel Red right now?” Lance asks. 

“I’m not telling you anything,” Keith hisses, ignoring the sting of Lance’s words. “I’m being quiet because otherwise we’ll get caught.”

Lance taps at the side of his helmet, and Keith gets a buzz of static in his ear. He swats at Lance before he can get a word out across the comms. 

“Are you an idiot? You know how screwed we’d be if they picked up on our radio signals?” 

But Lance isn’t really listening, just looking at Keith and worrying at his bottom lip. 

“Let’s find a window,” Lance says, and takes off in the opposite direction of where they’re supposed to be going. Not that Keith really actually knows where they’re supposed to be going. But this direction had just been feeling kinda right and now Lance is walking the complete other way. 

“Where are you going?” Keith asks.

“I’m finding us a window,” Lance says. “Because  _ someone _ isn’t taking my word for it when I tell him that we’re moving.” 

This isn’t on their list of mission objectives. They don’t need to find a window. They need to attach this tiny transmitter that Pidge made to the ship’s main computer and then get the hell out. Apparently it’s supposed to be able to broadcast long-range, and if Pidge can get it to work right she might be able to not only hack into this ship’s system but the entire Galra network, all from the safety and comfort of the castle’s lounge. 

“Why can’t she go stick the damn thing on the computer?” Lance had whined when Shiro told him he’d be sneaking onboard this Galra base that they’d happened across. 

“Stop complaining,” Keith replied. “We all have important things to do to deal with the Galra.” 

This, of course, had been right before Shiro said, “Keith, you’ll be going with him.” 

“What? Why me?” 

“‘ _ Stop complaining,’ _ ” Lance parroted back at him, in a voice that was way too nasally to be an accurate mockery of his own, so he didn’t even bother being offended. 

“Because you can interact with Galra tech. And,” Shiro said, with one eyebrow raised, looking back and forth between the two of them, “it seems like you two could use some time to sort out your differences.”

All this, of course, had led Keith to this very moment. Right here, striding after Lance on a Galra space station, walking  _ away _ from where they’re supposed to be going. Lance can’t even really know that there’s a window this way. Do Galra ships even have windows? Do Galra look at the stars? 

(Keith does. But he’s a little different.)

To be perfectly honest, Keith is all sorts of turned around at this point too and can’t really remember where they came in from. That’s a problem that they’re going to have to deal with later. Not too much later, if they’re lucky. This really is supposed to be a quick mission. Shiro had dropped them off in a cloaked pod and said goodbye like he was dropping them off at soccer practice. He’ll be back soon to get them, when Lance and Keith send him the signal using this fancy pager Hunk made that’s not supposed to be picked up by Galra technology.  In the meantime Shiro’s back at the castle, probably having a grand old time with everyone who isn’t Keith and Lance right now. They couldn’t risk bringing their lions and just parking them outside, because one, that was just inviting someone to steal them and two, if the lions were found, then Keith and Lance were found too, and that was game over for the transmitter probably, not to mention Keith and Lance as well. 

Another thing that could possibly be game over for Keith and Lance: Lance’s infuriating habit of walking loudly when he doesn’t know what’s around corners. Like right now. Keith knows for a fact that there are sentries here, because they’re crawling all over this place. He can just imagine the burn of lasers on his back now, the shouts of Galra coming after them. 

Here’s the thing about this mission. They absolutely  _ can’t _ be spotted. He and Lance are completely defenseless here, and alone. Sure, they’ve got their bayards, but what are two guys with a sword and a gun going to do against a whole ship of alien soldiers? Hopefully hold them off until Shiro can get his ass over here, if it comes to that, but Keith, despite the burning in his veins, would definitely rather it didn’t come to that. 

The castle isn’t too far away. This Galra space station is just a huge hulking ship chilling in the middle of space, so it’s not going anywhere fast. Right? Right. 

“Keep it down,” Keith says, reaching out and grabbing Lance’s shoulder to slow him. Lance just twists to stick out his tongue at him, but he does duck down behind a wall support when motion flickers at the edge of his vision. 

It’s not a moment too soon, as a pair of Galra sentries stroll across the hall through a perpendicular hallway. Keith doesn’t think about how close they were to becoming Galra-made swiss cheese in that moment. He just thinks about breathing in, breathing out, and then standing back up to continue the mission. 

Lance takes off down a random hallway and Keith has no choice but to roll his eyes and follow. He clearly has  _ no idea _ where he’s leading them. They need to stop dicking around and get to it. This is a war they’re in, billions of lives that could be won or lost based on their every action. But he feels like Lance isn’t going to let this go until he sees for himself that they’re just hanging out and still orbiting the huge gaseous planet that they’ve been near the entire time. It’s huge and purple so there’s no way they’ll be able to miss it when they find a window,  _ if _ they find a window, and— _ oh. _

The small observation deck is empty except for him and Lance and a huge wall of window. There’s no big purple planet. There’s no smattering of stars. There’s just light streaking by, so impossibly fast that it looks like a wall of alternating bands of white-blue and yellow against an infrequent wall of black. 

They’ve gotta be near light speed if it looks like that. 

“I  _ told _ you!” screeches Lance, and Keith tightens his grip on his bayard, waiting for the sirens to start, the sentries to come pouring in. Lance is loud enough to be the alarm himself. 

“Okay, okay,” Keith says, quietly trying to contain the panic that comes bubbling up when he tears his eyes away from Lance long enough to look at the window. They’re going somewhere. They’re going there fast. 

He grabs Lance by the arm and drags them down into a well-shadowed corner. They’re at a dead end here, and if anyone comes into this room they’re screwed. He can hope that the Castle-ship is following along, but the possibility of an extraction right now seems slim. 

Lance is watching the window, and the light and motion is reflected in his wide eyes. His lips thin into a hard frown.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Keith says. “We’re still going to complete the mission. Put the thing in the computer or whatever. Then we find the escape pods and get the hell out of here.”

“I guess we can’t just call Shiro,” Lance replies. “I can’t feel Blue. Wherever the castle is, it’s far far away from wherever the hell we are.”

Keith tentatively feels along his connection to Red and…yeah. She’s really distant. Presumably the Castle-ship is gone with her. Well actually, it’s Keith and Lance who are gone, out here lost in the middle of space, trapped in hostile territory, far away from anything remotely considered safety. 

Keith instinctively retracts his bayard, then forms the sword again. The weight of it is comforting in his hand. He knows he’ll get out of here alive somehow or other, but he could use the reminder of its power right now. 

Lance, meanwhile, taps the side of his helmet again. This time Keith lets him, but the emptiness that echoes back when Lance calls into it for help is discouraging at best. He turns his own off. They’re useless here now. He’s not going to get separated from Lance, and it’s not like he has anyone else to talk to over the damn thing. What’s he going to do? Chitchat with the Galra technicians who pick up on their signals? 

“Well we’re not going to get anything done just sitting here,” Keith says. “Let’s go.”

Lance follows him this time. 

Of all the people to get stuck on an enemy spacecraft with, of course it’s him. Of course it’s Lance, who Keith still has to shut up by throwing a hand over his mouth despite the wandering patrols that he’s seen with his own two eyes. Of course it’s Lance, who in return licks Keith’s palm. Of course it’s Lance, who almost trips over Keith and falls out of their hiding spot more than once. Of course it’s Lance, who is quick and loud to tell Keith that he’s going the wrong way whenever Keith takes a turn. 

“How do you even know?” Keith asks, rounding on him. 

“Pretty sure Pidge said the computer would be close to the bridge,” Lance says. “And the bridge would be towards the front of the ship. You, my man, are headed towards the back.”

Of course it’s Lance, who somehow thinks he knows this. 

Keith knows why Shiro sent them, though. This isn’t just a get-over-your-bickering kind of mission. This isn't even a you-two-are-actually-great-when-you-work-together kind of mission, though that doesn’t hurt. This is actually entirely Lance’s fault, because of  _ that thing _ that happened the other day. Lance’s fault.  _ That thing _ . 

He looks at him now, across the hall. Lance is crouched beside a dark hallway, checking for patrols, his long limbs gathered in to make himself compact, but ready to spring outwards. He’s leaning his bayard back against his shoulder like it’s always belonged there, bouncing on his toes a little bit as he watches.  _ Up-down, up-down _ . The armor accentuates the grace of his spine. 

As Keith’s looking at him, Lance turns and they make eye contact. “Let’s go,” he says with a jerk of his head. He unfolds upwards and hurries, not waiting to see if Keith is behind him. Keith is, of course, behind him. 

Which is a problem, because when Lance stops short with a, “ _ Holy quiznak _ ,” Keith almost rams straight into his back. Any other time that might’ve been okay, but not now, Keith realizes as he rushes to backpedal. He slams himself back against a wall, into a shadowy alcove, and when Lance doesn't budge from where he stopped short Keith grabs him by the back of his armor and tugs him back with him. 

“What the hell  _ is  _ that?” Lance cries, though at least he’s keeping his voice down now. The sight of a few dozen armed Galra sentries lined up in the next room probably was what had that effect on him. He looks down at the bayard in his hand, like it’s a flimsy children’s toy against what the Galra in there are packing. He’s probably thinking there’s no fighting their way out of this one. 

Though to Keith, those words are laughable. 

“Is that the way to the bridge?” Keith asks Lance. 

“Well I don’t think those guards are standing around protecting more empty hallways,” Lance says. And then he gives Keith a cold look. “We definitely can’t get through this way though, so don’t even think about it.” 

Keith isn’t thinking about it. At least not seriously. The idea of leaping out of hiding and feeling the edge of his sword cut through some Galra robot is actually pretty appealing right now, but he understands why that can only remain a fantasy. So instead he turns to Lance. Their shoulder pieces knock together. 

“So what, then?” he asks. 

Lance shrugs. “Go around, I guess.”

“Is there a way to go around?” 

“How am I supposed to know?” Lance replies. “I’d rather look for one than get caught!” 

Keith rests his head back against the wall, closes his eyes. Takes deep breaths the same way Shiro taught him. He’s not one to often think of consequences but this situation has him on edge in the strangest ways. If they’re caught it’s the end of the mission, sure, but without backup, without an escape plan, it could be the end of other things too. Like their lives.  _ Or our freedom _ , he thinks darkly, while images of Shiro’s arm and poor mental health flash through his head. 

Keith pushes off the wall and follows Lance wordlessly when they backtrack and loop around the way they came. He lets Lance look for a parallel path, a detour, while he watches their back. He does a damn good job of it too, nudging Lance into hallway offshoots just before sentries come strolling by. There are definitely more of them here now, and Keith can’t help but feel like they’re finally on their way to something. It’ll still be in and out. They’ll nip into where the computer is, attach Pidge’s little whatever to the machine, find an escape pod, and be out of there before anyone knows it. No problem. 

Except there is a problem. 

And that’s that they’ve finally seemed to happen upon the main area of the space station. They can see it from here, where they’re both peeking from around the corner of a dark corridor. There’s what looks like a bridge down that way, and some important-looking doors. And it’s absolutely  _ buzzing _ with Galra. 

“We need a diversion,” Lance says. 

“Okay,” Keith says, and grabs Lance’s hand that’s on his bayard. He hefts it up and puts his fingers over Lance’s on the trigger and fires— _ one, twice, three times _ —down the hall in the direction from which they came, at what looks like something vaguely important attached to the wall. Lance squawks, but the sound of something breaking is louder. Keith pulls Lance down behind a support.

It’s better than anything Keith could have planned, really. He must’ve hit something electrical because the lights overhead flicker and then go out. The bridge is still crawling with enemy soldiers but their attention is turned down the corridor, and a number of them run straight by where Keith and Lance are ducking, holding their breath, in the direction of the crash. 

Something smells like smoke. 

“Come on,” Keith hisses, and drags Lance out of their hiding spot, in the direction of the bridge. They probably have thirty ticks. If they’re lucky. Their way is clear now, though, and they just have to find the right thing, do the right thing, and then get out of there. In and out. No problem. 

“Dude, don’t you  _ dare _ touch my bayard ever again.” How Lance has the ability to bitch at him while also trying to hurriedly sneak down a hallway, Keith has no idea. “It’s so personal! That’s supposed to stay between me and Blue!” 

Keith ignores him and ducks into an open doorway to get out of plain sight. They’re lucky that Galra ships are naturally poorly-lit, and even more so that the lights are out right now. He takes a look around, spots the next cover, and goes for it.

“Where are we even going right now?” Lance whispers shrilly, hot on his heels. 

“I don’t know,” Keith says. “Let’s find out.”

They’re taking shelter behind some big mechanical-looking thing when Keith spots it, right across the corridor from them. A big door opens and out comes six or seven of what Keith can only assume are the Galra’s version of IT guys, jogging down the hallway towards where a crowd has now gathered around the damaged area. They’re not dressed in armor, just uniforms, and what’s in the doorway behind them is something that looks kind of like other really powerful alien computers he’s seen around. 

He darts out towards it without a second thought. 

“Keith!” says Lance in the most panicky shout-whisper he can muster. 

Keith  _ feels _ the presence before he sees it; he knows that someone’s at his shoulder and lashes out with his bayard. It slices through air and he spins to face his attacker head-on, braced for impact. 

Only to find it’s not an attacker at all. 

This Galra has no time for him. They probably didn’t even see him. They’re careening down the hallway, in the bridge already, and they’re literally  _ on fire _ . 

Keith almost smirks. Too easy. He ducks into the computer room, and Lance is behind him. The door slides shut after a moment or two, and they’re alone with the hulking machine. 

It hums. Keith hadn't realized how loud things had been out in the corridor until he came in here, but suddenly this place feels downright cozy after the chaos going on outside. Plus there’s something peaceful about the huge computer. It takes up a solid half of the room and it’s a solid block of inanimate object. It’s not going to hop up and kill him, or capture him and throw him in some dungeon somewhere in the bowels of the ship. He has to keep an eye on the door, in case someone else comes in, because they  _ will  _ try to do that. But this machine here, it’s staying right in place. 

“Let’s hurry and get out of here,” Lance says, standing with his bayard at the ready in front of the door. 

“That was my plan,” Keith says, approaching the computer. He fishes the tiny drive that Pidge gave him out of his pocket and looks for a place to hook it up. He honestly doesn’t know much about computers beyond the screen and the keyboard, but he trusts that Pidge’s technology is Lance-proof enough to have a good shot at working. 

He manages to find a port that vaguely looks like it could be a fit. What’s more, it’s out of immediate sight. He sticks the thing on and backs up towards Lance. 

“Escape pods?” Lance asks.

“Escape pods,” Keith agrees. 

It’s a risk, exiting the room when they have no idea what’s going on outside. But they do anyway, somehow are not killed instantly, and immediately realize something. 

“Way to go, Keith,” Lance hisses. “Your great diversion cut off our escape route.” 

They press their backs against the door behind them when it slides shut, taking advantage of the dim doorway. They can’t go back the way they’ve came. There’s what appears to be a Galra firefighting crew down there, as well as more Galra soldiers than Keith has ever seen in one place in his life, standing around and watching. There’s smoke billowing from that direction, but even that would prove useless with the crowd thronging around down there. 

Keith looks in the other direction, towards the bridge. The lights are still on there. And a few Galra are milling about, pausing every so often to crane their necks in the direction of the hallway to see what’s going on. This corridor might be the only way in and out of the bridge. But there’s nowhere to hide here, and whatever’s going on down the hall isn’t going to keep the Galra occupied forever. 

“Let’s go,” he says to Lance, and heads towards the bridge. 

“Hey—!” Lance starts, but Keith’s already going, pressed against the wall in case anyone decides to take a glance down the corridor. 

It’s because they’re both flattened against it that Lance nearly trips over something protruding from the wall at knee height. He curses, leaning down to rub at his shin, and Keith rolls his eyes but pauses to wait for him. He scans the hallway for signs of anyone approaching, but whatever’s going on now down the hall is still holding everyone’s attention. 

“Hey, Keith,” Lance says, something like realization dawning in his voice. He reaches down and tugs at whatever the thing is that he just ran into. It gives, and a small door, about the size of a kitchen cabinet, opens outwards. He leans down to look inside, and then flashes his smile up at Keith. “How do you feel about being on your knees?”

“Just  _ go _ ,” Keith growls. As he watches Lance retract his bayard there’s a part of him that fantasizes about this being a trash chute and Lance falling down into it and getting launched out into space. But there’s an even bigger part of him that’s relieved when he gets down and crawls in after him and sees he’s still there, even if it means his feet are in his face. 

“I knew it should’ve been Pidge on this mission,” Lance says. He’s almost conversational now as Keith tries to pull the door shut behind him, hooking it with his foot. It’s dark in here except for a faint glow from somewhere far, far up ahead. He can almost make out Lance’s shape in front of him, but it’s more from the scraping he hears that he knows Lance is shuffling along. He goes on dreamily, “Can’t wait to be back in my bed.” 

“Let’s just get out of here first,” Keith says. 

“Hey buddy, just trying to keep morale up,” Lance replies. 

“Do that later.” 

Keith reaches out too far and brushes against Lance’s calf. Lance pauses in his movements, and Keith nearly runs into him again until he senses his mass directly in front of him. He’s barely saved from crawling face-first into Lance’s ass, but he can still hear Lance opening his mouth, Lance sucking in breath. He’s about to say something horribly, painfully dumb, and Keith knows it. 

But instead Lance just keeps moving again. And Keith, after a pause, follows. 

After a few minutes the passageway begins to grow brighter, and Keith can make out the stripes of grating directly ahead of them. When Lance reaches it, he prepares his bayard and carefully nudges the hatch open, sticking his gun out at the same time as his head. 

“Coast is clear,” he says, pushing himself out of the hole with as much grace as a squirrel falling from a tree. Keith waits until he rights himself to start his own emergence. Reactivating his own bayard, he climbs to his feet and stands beside Lance. 

They continue on foot now, creeping through the halls as they did earlier. Lance seems to have some concept of where they’re headed, but for Keith all he can think is that they’re going  _ away _ . The sooner they get out of here the better. 

Somehow they almost seem to have this sneaking thing down at this point because they make it a few hallways without anything resembling a close call. The sentries are definitely sparser down here. No one seems to be expecting any trouble in the extremities of a central base, or maybe they’ve all been called in to defend against the mysterious gunman who started the fire near the bridge. Either way, by the time Keith follows Lance into the escape pod bay, he’s feeling a lot more relaxed. Almost relieved. They’ll be back in the Castle-ship before they know it. 

Regardless he turns to guard the entrance while letting Lance figure out which doorway will open to a pod that’ll take them home. He doesn’t want anything sneaking up on them when they’re this close, when he can practically taste the recycled air of the Castle-ship and the Lance-free areas it provides. 

Without meaning to, he glances over his shoulder at the man in question. Lance’s bayard hangs limply at his side, his mouth curved into a frown as he goes from one docking station to the next. He takes off his helmet and turns to press his face against the glass window set into the door of the dock, and Keith’s eyes settle on a curl of hair just behind his ear. 

“What’s going on?” Keith asks. 

Lance doesn't respond for a second, and only moves to the next port, tapping against the wall as he goes. 

“Do you need me to do it?” Keith asks. 

“No,” Lance snaps. “I— _ quiznak _ .” 

“What is it?” 

Lance spins to face him. “None of the pods are here.” 

Keith’s expression twists to match Lance’s frown. “What do you mean none of the pods are here?” 

“I  _ mean _ ,” Lance says, throwing his arms wide, “there aren’t any escape pods. All the docks are empty!”

Keith rolls his eyes and walks towards the first hatch on his right. That can’t be the case. What kind of space station doesn’t have any escape pods? Lance must be missing something. 

But when he peeks through the window that should give a view into a ready escape pod, all he sees is space. 

“They’re  _ all _ gone,” Lance says. 

Keith can’t believe that. He can’t take his word for it. He goes to the next one and looks. Nothing. The next one. Nothing. Nothing, nothing,  _ nothing.  _

“This is ridiculous,” Lance rants behind him as he goes. “This has to be against safety protocols or something. Haven’t the Galra ever seen the  _ Titanic _ ?” 

Keith reaches the end of the room, and he finds that he has to face this truth. There are no escape pods. Not here. 

“Are there any other escape pod docks on this base?” Keith asks Lance, cutting into his whining. 

Lance quiets, blinks. “I don’t know. This is the only one on the map Pidge showed me.” 

“This is a huge central base,” Keith muses, walking up to Lance. “There’ve got to be other ships on here somewhere.”

He’s about to go, about to stride out of there and go looking for them himself, but he’s suddenly yanked backwards by a hand on his elbow. 

“Keith, hold on,” Lance says. “Maybe we should just lie low and wait for the others to come get us.”

“And just sit around on a Galra space station until that happens?” 

“Look,” Lance says. “We couldn’t find an escape pod, and who knows where others might be? Instead of blowing our cover, wouldn’t it be better to just find a hiding spot and hang out until we have a better plan?” 

“No,” Keith says, but he has nothing to back that up with other than the idea that no one might be coming for them. Which isn’t really something he particularly wants to dwell on. 

They should be prepared for that situation, though. There’s no promise that they’ll be able to get out of here. They need to find their own way off, or potentially become the Druids’ next playthings. 

But maybe,  _ maybe _ they could regroup first. 

“Fine. Let’s find a safe spot to reorganize in,” Keith says, and then heads back out into the dark, cavernous hallways of the ship. 


	2. PART 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please check out the awesome art [wuhkie](http://wuhkie.tumblr.com/) made to go with this fic!! one of them goes with this chapter so now's a good time to look:  
> [1](http://wuhkie.tumblr.com/post/164101567884/the-look-lance-gives-him-next-stretches-so-long) [2 ](http://wuhkie.tumblr.com/post/164101380184/its-a-simple-mission-sneak-in-sneak-out-keith)

Something weird about Galra ships: the halls are always so dark. It’s probably got something to do with the biological makeup of their eerie glowing yellow eyes, but despite his lineage Keith doesn’t have those, so it’s just dark. Not that he minds. It just makes it a lot harder to rely on sight as a sense. It makes things harder to see as they creep along, and he has to assume that it doesn’t work both ways. He might not be able to see approaching Galra, but they can probably see him. Instead of letting this worry him, he tunes in to the sounds around them instead.

This wouldn’t be possible if Lance hadn’t finally piped down, but he has. Maybe the situation wasn’t dire enough for him before, but now it is if his silence is any indication. In fact, he seems a little stuck in his own head. That’s fine with Keith, for now. If he’s quiet and follows along they can be safe. He can worry about whatever issues Lance is working through later.

They’re ducked behind a corner counting footsteps. At least that’s what Keith’s doing. He has no way of telling what’s going on in Lance’s mind, especially when he looks up to jerk his head in the direction they should be going and finds Lance’s eyes on him. They’re assessing, calculating, serious in a way that they never are.

“What,” Keith hisses just before the two of them spring out into the hallway and sprint down to the next cover they can find. A small offshoot hallway, with just enough dark shadow to make the goosebumps on Keith’s arms smooth out. He stands next to Lance in the dark, watching the main corridor over his shoulder.

“Nothing,” replies Lance. Somehow his voice is almost casual. Like he could start strolling and whistling at any point now. “Just looking.”

“At _what_ ,” Keith demands, and when the next sentry passes by inches from their hiding space, it slows its footsteps to a pause and looks around. Keith wants to punch the wall but he holds his breath. The sentry continues.

The look Lance gives him next stretches so long that it feels almost withering. The desert sun, Keith suddenly thinks of. Bright and sparkling, but instead now blue and sort of nice to stare into.

That’s dangerous. He’ll go blind.

“Nothing really.”

“What does that mean?”

“I, uh--”

Keith doesn’t ever get to learn what Lance is looking at, because in that moment there’s a loud _click_ from behind him. He whirls just in time to see a pair of sentries down the hall, clearly having spotting them, guns raised. Trained on them. Ready to fire. Charging up.

_Pew pew._

Keith flinches back, braces for the pain. But it never comes. The two sentries crumple where they stand.

He half turns to see Lance with a hand on a cocked hip, holding up his gun, his face split by a huge smirk.

“The sharpshooter strikes again,” he crows.

If Lance was ever about to say something to Keith, Keith has completely forgotten it by now.

“Let’s just hope they didn’t raise an alarm,” Keith says, turning on his heel and hurrying over to the decommissioned sentries. “We have to hide these.”

Lance crouches down beside the bot and pokes at it. It topples easily. “Yeah?” he asks. “Where?”

Keith glances around. There are doors along this corridor but he’s wary to open them when he doesn’t know what lies beyond. He could be opening a door onto a busy armory, or an in-progress war meeting for all he knows. That would be this end of this mission for certain.

Regardless he slams his hand against a door sensor. They don’t have time to worry about things like this. This door here seems pretty unthreatening, so why not open it. It’s even more innocuous when it gives way to a tiny room that looks like it could be a closet. There’s nothing more inside the cramped space than a broom and a series of dusty shelves.

“In here,” he tells Lance, and immediately goes to grab one of the sentries by its ankles and drags it over, praying that the scrape of its armor against the ground doesn’t draw attention.

Lance is quick to follow Keith’s lead. In a moment they’re both shoving the sentries into the room. Lance pushes against them with his shoulder to keep them from giving into gravity and falling out while Keith presses the button to close the door again. It shuts on the sentries with a quiet _whoosh_ and Lance and Keith both step back, simultaneously sighing in relief.

It’s then that Keith notices Lance’s hands are shaking, but he doesn’t say anything other than, “Come on.” They duck down at the corner of an intersection again. It’s not the time or the place to be addressing fears and anxieties.

Instead he presses his own palm to the back of Lance’s hand. It’s not much. But it’s something. When Lance looks at him with wide eyes he pulls away and launches himself down the hallway, sensing that the coast is clear. His cheeks burn, but it’s not the time for that either.

They need to separate themselves from where the sentries went down. When that’s discovered, either by the sentries not checking in, or their bodies being happened upon, or however security works on this godforsaken ship, it’ll only be a matter of time before the whole place is being scoured for them. Before that happens they need to make distance. Make distance, and hopefully find a secure place to rest. Lance is at Keith’s back, immediately on his heels. Keith takes comfort in this, somehow.

“Hey Mr. My-Lion-Throws-A-Fit-If-I-So-Much-As-Stub-My-Toe,” Lance says as they slip into a dark, quiet hallway that seems to be infrequently traveled, “can’t you give Red a call right now?” He touches his fingers to the side of his helmet as though he’s touching his temple to concentrate. “Ring ring! Hey kitty, we need a ride!”

Keith grits his teeth and ignores him. He could clock Lance in the face right now, but with Lance’s helmet on he thinks that would hurt his hand more than it would Lance, even if it would be satisfying.

“I’m surprised she’s not here already,” Lance goes on, completely oblivious to the set of Keith’s jaw. “I thought you two were married or something.”

Keith takes a deep breath in through his nose and thinks about what Shiro would do if he were here. He definitely wouldn’t kill the only teammate stuck with him on a Galra base. Not even if it was Lance.

There’s quiet for a second, and Keith thinks that he’s finally finished, but Lance’s footsteps speed up, and his curious gaze peeks into his peripherals.

“Oh,” says Lance. “She’s still not talking to you, huh?”

Keith halts in his steps.

“Could you shut up?” he shouts. “We’re trapped on a Galra base. I don’t need your commentary about my relationship with Red, okay? We just need to focus on getting out of here.”

“Hey, I was just asking,” Lance says, and his voice is a little smaller, tighter, eyes darting up and down the hall.

Keith immediately feels a twinge of embarrassment as he checks the hallway too. He’s surprised the outburst didn’t attract attention, but it’s only a matter of time before they’re spotted here. He drops low to look around a corner and Lance joins him, close near his back.

“She’ll come around,” Lance says, and his voice has a gentle quality to it that Keith’s never heard before. “You two have always been the closest out of any of us. She has to get why you piloted the Black Lion for awhile. It’s not like you were abandoning her.”

Keith continues to silently peek around the corner.

“Whenever I was in her she seemed to miss you a lot,” Lance goes on. Something in his voice is bittersweet.

Keith snorts. “Yeah, that’s why she won’t respond to me now.”

She lets him in. She lets him in and lets him take her controls in hand and lets him steer her out into battle. She’ll open up for his bayard and she’ll blast fire from her jaws. But when it comes to being synced, when it comes to sharing thoughts and emotion and finding warmth in each other, she’s gone.

But that’s a problem for another day.

Keith lifts himself up and darts around the corner, not checking to see if Lance is behind him or not. Of course he is. Lance is always right here with him, for better or for worse.

Keith doesn’t know what he’s looking for as far as a hiding place goes. It could be behind any of these doors, really. But then again, _anything_ could be behind any of these doors. It’s impossible to say where or what they’ll find. He just lets his feet carry him, lets his instincts guide the places where he stops to check around corners, lets the sound of Lance’s footsteps bolster him. It’s a tense many minutes that this goes on. Keith passes close enough to some sentries that he could reach out and grab the guns from their hands.

There’s a tension holding his spine taut. Keith isn’t one to dabble in fear but the reality of this situation is harsh. There’s no telling what could happen if someone finds them and they’re not fast enough. Lance got lucky earlier. That’s all it was. They just as easily could be dead on the floor of a Galra hallway right now.

Keith thinks of Shiro, and a weaponized arm, and scars stretched across skin, and restless nights broken by screaming and cold sweats. He thinks of Shiro freezing up even when he’s safe, secure. He thinks of the haunted look that shadows his eyes sometimes. Killing them is not the worst thing the Galra could do.

They need to get out of here. They need to be safe.

It’s about when the weight of his armor on his shoulders starts digging in painfully that Keith spots it. A wide, open arch of a door, much bigger than any of the ones they’ve passed. The inside is dark, shadowed.

He makes eye contact with Lance and they quietly approach.

“What the heck is this place?” Lance asks, tentatively stepping inside, like he’s expecting laser fire to come at him from all directions as he passes the threshold. Realistically, it absolutely could, but he manages to make it inside without being riddled full of holes. Keith follows him in.

Looking around there’s actually not a lot to see. He’d thought that the rest of Galra ships were poorly-lit, but this room is dark like the underground interior of the desert caves, untouched by the distant glow of its entrance. The far end and the ceiling are both completely in shadow, giving Keith no indication as to the actual size of it, but it has the dwarfing feel of a warehouse or a hangar. Keith feels contrarily claustrophobic. That might have something to do with the wide crates stacked high on either side of the entrance.

“Cargo hold?” he says, kicking at one of the boxes. It makes a dull, quiet thud. There’s really no telling what could be in them, labeled as they are in Galra script.

Keith wanders in further, until the light from the open door no longer stretches out over the ground he’s walking on.

“Where are you going?” Lance hisses, his voice raised an irritated octave.

Keith looks back over his shoulder at him. Lance has his gun out, hoisted up in both his hands, back to the door. At least he’s not standing directly in front of it, directly where a guard would look if one happened to wander by. But he is vulnerable like that. Keith jerks his head towards the path between the towering crates that disappears into the darkness.

“If we’re looking for a place to hide, this is it,” he says. “Come on.”

He turns and continues walking, and just as he expects it’s only another few footsteps before he hears Lance squeak behind him and hurried footsteps approaching. It’s the hand on his waist that he’s not expecting, the heavy touch of Lance reaching out, tethering himself to him, as though the darkness can physically separate their bodies.

The weight of it seems to burn though Keith’s suit. Despite the situation, it’s the only thing he can focus on for a moment, like he can almost feel it tingling on his skin.

“Scared?” he teases.

“Psh,” Lance says. “Pfft. Scared. Psshh. Hah.”

Keith comes to a branch in the path, barely visible in the blue glow of his suit. He takes a right without giving it a second thought.

“Well you should be,” Keith replies. “This is a pretty bad situation.”

Lance’s fingers seem to tighten instinctively on Keith’s hipbone. “You _know_ I don’t like the dark, man.”

In this moment, Keith is not a fan of the dark either. Something about it in this room seems weighty. Oppressive. Like it could come caving in on them any second, crashing down around them, crushing their fragile bodies with its unforgiving mass. Maybe it’s the presence of the crates, piled high on either side until what could be infinity for all Keith can distinguish. Maybe it’s the complete lack of direction, the idea that Keith could be leading Lance into an inescapable corner. Maybe it’s how utterly unbroken the darkness is, something so rare in the star-speckled expanse of outer space.

Pushing these thoughts aside, he wades on through the shadows. The further into the room they can get, the better. He has no idea what all this stuff is, but presumably things in the middle or the far end of the room wouldn’t need to be accessed as much as what’s stored in the front. If they can find some cranny somewhere to tuck themselves in here, they could rest for a little while.

“How’s this look?” he finally asks, pulling to a stop in front of a gap in the even wall of crates. It’s nothing more than a shallow alcove where the boxes aren’t pushed together all the way, not any bigger than a few feet across and a few feet deep, but if they sit inside anyone walking down the corridor won’t be able to see them until they’re right on top of them.

“I don’t know! I can’t _see_ ,” says Lance, but he drops his hand from Keith’s waist. Keith tries not to miss it.

Exhausted, he sits down inside the safety of the alcove, leaning back against one of the crates and stretching his legs out. He pops off his helmet and rests it on his lap while Lance’s weight settles across from him. The space is too tight for them to be very far apart, and Lance’s legs brush against his as he makes himself comfortable.

There’s barely enough light for Keith to make out Lance’s face when Lance removes his helmet, but he can tell that it’s carefully blank. Serious. His features are highlighted by the blue glow, and the shadows they cast are sharp and jagged, but the faintness of the light lends him a certain softness, accentuates his eyelashes, the curve of his nose, the fall of his hair, the purse of his lips.

“Do you think the Galra make garlic knots?” Lance asks. “I’m starving. There’s gotta be a kitchen around here somewhere, right?”

“Let’s worry about that later,” Keith says. “Take a nap first. Keep your energy up.”

“What about a bathroom?” Lance goes on, like he didn’t even hear Keith at all. “ _You_ pee, right? So there’s gotta be a bathroom around here. I could really use one.”

Keith tips his head back hard against the crate behind him, and it makes a dull _thud_. “Just go pick a corner, Lance. Somewhere far away from here.”

Lance leans out into the pathway and looks left and right, as though he could see if anyone had followed them down here. “Out there?”

“Yes, out there,” Keith says, closing his eyes. He’s hoping it’ll make the darkness less daunting, since the backside of his eyelids are always dark. But he can still feel its weight pressing down on him.

“You wouldn’t be interested in coming with me, would you?” Lance asks, his voice high and tight.

“What are you, five?” scoffs Keith. “You need me to hold your hand?”

The words were meant as a joke but a moment of silence passes as they both ingest what Keith said. There’s a sort of implication in the idea of Keith holding Lance’s hand at all that makes his stomach curl into an uneasy twist, and with each passing second he regrets his choice of words more. He opens his eyes.

Lance pushes himself up off the ground and disappears into the darkness.

“Don’t get lost,” Keith says to the fuzzy gray outline of his retreating form before it’s swallowed.

Over the next two minutes, Keith wonders if telling Lance that could have jinxed him, if Lance would truly get lost in this dark labyrinth never to be recovered. Keith’s not a worrier, though. He’s a doer. When Lance emerges suddenly from the darkness again, he nearly trips over Keith, who’s crouching at the entrance of the alcove with his bayard at the ready.

Lance squawks. “What are you doing?”

“Oh.” All the tension Keith didn’t know he was holding leaves him at once. “I was about to go save you.”

Lance’s head jerks in one direction, and then the other, eyes wide in fear, before settling back down on Keith. “Save me _from what_?”

Sitting back, feeling a little foolish, Keith deactivates his bayard. “I don’t know,” he says sheepishly.

Lance narrows his eyes at him skeptically, but he sits down again, this time beside Keith. Their shoulders brush as he makes himself comfortable. Keith is hyperaware of everything at this moment: the eerie empty silence of the hold, the glow of his uniform, the way his ankle aches. But something about the sigh Lance lets out fills his head entirely.

“Get some rest,” Keith says.

“I don’t know if I could sleep right now,” Lance admits quietly.

“Try,” Keith replies. “I’ll take first watch. I’ll wake you up in a little bit.”

Keith is exhausted. He could probably fall asleep easily right now. On the other hand, they are trapped in enemy territory, surrounded completely by hostiles, with little hope of extraction, and camped out uncomfortably in a dark, suffocating space. He can’t blame Lance for a little bit of insomnia. But he still wants him well-rested. Or as well-rested as he can possibly get, given the situation.

Lance stretches out as much as he can on the floor, using his arm as a pillow. He’s still for all of thirty seconds, before he rolls onto his back, and upon realizing how uncomfortable his suit makes that position, onto his other side. This doesn’t seem to please him either, because he sighs again, and rolls back to his initial position.

This time he’s quiet for long enough that Keith thinks he’s maybe drifted off, until he suddenly groans loudly and rolls onto his stomach and slams his forehead into the ground.

“I’m so exhausted but I can’t sleep,” he whines. “I want a pillow.”

Keith rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t stop to consider. Instead, he just says, “Come here,” and hauls Lance closer with a grip around his arm.

Lance gives no resistance but seems confused until Keith guides his head onto his thigh. Eyes wide and mouth slightly open, Lance stares up at him, gaze roving over his face. Then his mouth shuts, and his expression turns soft.

Even here, even now, Keith’s heart skips a beat.

“Thanks, Keith,” Lance says quietly, and Keith can’t fight the sudden urge to thread his fingers into Lance’s hair. So he scritches his nails against Lance’s scalp until Lance closes his eyes, looking almost contented. The texture of Lance’s hair isn’t discernable through his suit’s glove, but the motion itself calms him. Lance is so real and present under his fingertips, here, organic, breathing. A solid weight on his thigh. Blood still pumping through his veins and signals still jumping through his nerves.

In a matter of minutes, Lance’s breathing is deep and even. It’s the only thing that lets Keith keep his composure in the oppressive silence of the vast room.

Keith stays alert, but allows himself to sink lower against the crates behind him. The pseudo-gravity seems to be dragging at him now more than usual. Dragging at his eyelids, too. He can’t afford to fall asleep right now, though. No matter how warm Lance’s weight is in his lap. No matter how much Keith feels like he can let his guard lower slightly for the first time since they stepped foot aboard this ship.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, his fingers dragging through the short strands of Lance’s hair, because he zones out for awhile. It’s long enough to lose feeling in his legs, for him to notice the dull ache in his shoulders. A night on the floor of a Galra cargo hold isn’t going to make that any better, but it’s probably better than a Galra prison cell. This thought has him shivering, despite Lance’s warmth curled in towards him.

He’s surprised that Lance is even letting him get this close. Especially after what had happened the other day. That’s the whole reason they’re here in the first place. Because of Lance, and the other day.

Keith blinks. He blinks again, and jerks his eyes open when he realizes that they had stayed closed. His head tips forward. He focuses on Lance’s sleeping face to give himself a reason to stay awake. He counts Lance’s eyelashes. He traces the outlines of the shadows over his cheeks with his eyes. Lance stays imprinted on the back of his eyelids when he closes them.

Blinding light crashes around him like a storm-tossed wave, flooding the alcove. Keith is on his feet in an instant, heedless of Lance’s body, bayard formed. The thunder of stampeding footsteps, incoming fast, bounces off the crates towards him. There’s more than one. There’s more than _ten_ , from the sounds of it. Shouted orders tear through the air.

“ _Find them_.”

Lance seems to have recovered enough to climb to his feet and form his own bayard. Its barrel is pointed towards the pathway, but a gun and a sword aren’t going to do them much good backed into a corner like this. Keith launches forward and grabs Lance’s wrist, pulling him along as he bolts down the walkway, away from where he can hear the sentries approaching.

_How did they find them?_

Keith turns a corner, and then another one, bayard held out in his left hand and Lance’s wrist still in his right. His heart crashes against the inside of his ribcage. Breathing is hard, like the inside of his mouth is encased in ice. They’ve got to get out of this room, they need to make it out of here, find somewhere else to hide, somewhere to escape to--

_Shit_. As he rounds another corner he comes face-to-face with a full squad of sentires congesting the way, their guns held at the ready. He spins and jerks back the way he came, but finds that at some point more sentries have filled in behind them, their guns also aimed towards them.

Lance pulls his hand from Keith’s grip and hoists his gun up. Keith lowers into a fighting stance.

“ _Kill them_ ,” comes the disembodied command.

Keith’s staring down the barrel of a laser gun pointed at the center of his chest.

He goes to duck, dodge, charge, do _something_ , but his feet are frozen to the ground. His muscles are encased in iron. His heart stops, his blood halts in his veins.

Lance, though. Lance moves. Lance throws himself forward, lunges towards the Galra, into the path of fire. The gun shoots.

Lance’s body crumples to the ground.

“ _Lance_!” Keith screams. Panic flares, hard and searing, through his chest. He’s regained the ability to move, apparently, because he immediately drops to his knees. Repeating Lance’s name in a breathless, terrified mantra, he turns Lance’s body over.

There’s a clean shot through his chestplate. Blood is pouring out, running over the pure white of his armor. Lance’s head lolls back as Keith pulls his body into his lap. Through the glass of his faceguard Keith can tell that his eyes are unseeing. Gone.

“Lance,” Keith shouts, shaking him, bowing over him. “Lance, wake up. Please. _Lance--_ ”

Keith jolts, his head snapping up, and it slams against the crate behind him. He can’t _see_ suddenly, he can’t _see_ and Lance is dead and he’s next, he’s next,

until he realizes the reason he can’t see is because he’s in the dark. He’s in the dark and, as his heart gradually stops trying to burst out of his chest, he realizes there are no Galra sentries before him. There are no Galra sentries anywhere here, actually. There’s still a warmth in his lap, the weight of a body, and for an awful moment Keith expects Lance to be limp and bloodied when he looks down. But relief spikes through him when, even through the darkness, he can tell Lance is breathing. His eyes are closed, his lips are parted, and he’s drooling into Keith’s lap.

It was a dream. They’re here in the cargo hold, safe. Or as safe as they could possibly be, in this situation.

Keith allows his heart rate to slow, his eyes to adjust. It takes some time but more than that it takes a full survey of Lance and all his features. The arch of his eyebrows, calm in sleep. The curve of his lips, soft and parted. The feathery shadows of his eyelashes, and the gentle curls of his hair behind his ears. It’s all there, it’s all definitely there, enough to regulate Keith’s breathing into something less than panicked. But it also looks too delicate to be real, nothing more than a soft haze.

Without thinking he picks up a hand and drags his thumb along the peak of Lance’s cheekbone, just to be sure. And then, Lance’s bottom lip. Those things are tangible, are real, are warm.

Emotion hits him hard in the gut. It isn’t the blast of a gun but it feels like it could be one, it comes with such a shocking intensity, an all-consuming violence. There’s no lasting harm to his body, at least not yet, but there very well could be. It crackles fiercely, flaring up and boiling over. It makes his muscles tense and his fists clench.

He’s going to protect Lance. He’s going to get Lance out of here. For the good of the universe, for the good of Voltron. For the good of Lance.

He sighs. Shakes his head. It’s probably about time he gets some real sleep.

Gripping Lance’s shoulders with both hands, he gives a hard shake.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, Lance. Wake up.”

He blinks the last of the nightmare from his mind as Lance lets out a deep, low groan and rolls onto his side, smearing drool on Keith’s thigh.

“Come on,” Keith says, prodding him in the weak spots of his armor.

“Whaaa,” Lance slurs against his leg, in the moment before Keith hauls him up into a sitting position. Blinking slowly, Lance brings his hands to his face and rubs at his eyes before turning fully towards Keith. “Morning already?”

“It’s been a few hours,” Keith says, curling on the ground with his back against the corner. “I need some rest too.”

Lance groans again, crawling towards Keith until he’s sitting over him, arms crossed. “I don’t think I slept at all.”

But Keith’s eyes are already closed. “Sucks,” he tries to say, but it probably comes out more like a breathy slur, because his consciousness is slipping out from under him before he can even shape his lips around any vowels.

* * *

 

Keith draws close to the surface of consciousness. Lance is laying beside him, a warm arm thrown over his body. He doesn’t open his eyes but he can tell from its weight, and from the sound of Lance breathing.

Now is not the time. _Now is not the time_.

Though maybe this is a dream too. He slips back under the cover of sleep.

* * *

 

When Keith wakes up he does it with a jolt, with a spark up his spine that slams him upright. He barely feels like he’s rested at all but he’s got to be on his guard. Something is different about the space than when he went to sleep. Something is wrong.

He looks left, he looks right, realizes his bayard is already held at the ready, and then it hits him.

_Lance isn’t here._

“ _Shit_ ,” Keith snarls to himself, staggering to his feet. Grogginess is clinging to him like a yoke across his back, and his mouth is dry and his throat is rough. His brain works in kicks and fits but he tries to sort through his thoughts. He wouldn’t be here if there had been a struggle, a fight. He would have woken up, or he would be dead. At the very least he wouldn’t be in the same place where he’d fallen asleep.

That means Lance must’ve left of his own free will. Optimistically, that means that Lance is just taking a piss and will be back any second now.

Realistically, Lance could be _anywhere_.

Keith shifts from one foot to the other. He grips tighter around his bayard. He takes a practice swing, and then two. He edges to the entrance of their little alcove, and looks left, then right. All he sees is darkness. All he hears is silence.

He chooses left and sets off at a brisk walk.

And barely makes it three steps before he catches sight of a distant glow, making its way towards him. He squints at it through the gloom and it is, indeed, bluish. Getting bigger and brighter, too. The gait of the footsteps that echo down the way is familiar.

“What the _fuck_ , Lance?” Keith demands when Lance is close enough to make out his features.

Lance must see that Keith is on the verge of snarling because he slows his pace and holds up his hands, full of something Keith can’t quite make out in the dark, defensively. “Whoa, whoa, calm down, buddy. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“I didn’t sleep in a bed!” Keith replies, loudly, before remembering the setting of this conversation. “And how else were you expecting me to react when I woke up alone?”

Bizarrely, Lance’s eyes go wide at this and his mouth falls open a little. He looks down and shuffles his feet, and then offers Keith whatever’s in his hands. “Well, I brought us water. What I think is water, at least? Do Galra drink water? It’s a clear liquid, anyway, maybe it’s vodka or something--”

Keith snatches one of the packs from Lance’s hands. It does look pretty similar to the water pouches on the Castle-ship, so it’s worth a shot. His tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth, he’s so dehydrated. His head is pounding now that he can think through his panic enough to recognize it. The Galra may drink water but they don’t seem to know what humidifiers are.

He tears it open and takes a mouthful and is pleased to find it’s not vodka (though perhaps that also would’ve been a pleasant surprise). It tastes like water, and it goes down like water, so he’s left to assume that it is, in fact, water. It’s a cool relief on his aching throat, and the annoyance that singed him moments ago sputters out under its weight. He tips his head back and lets the water flow freely from the small opening. Some of it spills down his chin but he can’t find it in himself to care.

“Thanks,” he says to the still-motionless Lance after a few heavenly gulps. He glances over to find Lance’s eyes wide and on him.

“No problem,” Lance says, in more of a squeak than anything else, before quickly busying himself with opening one of the other packs.

They settle back into the alcove before finishing off their water, and as it splashes into his empty stomach, Keith begins to realize how hungry he is.

“Where’d you get this, anyway?” he asks, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Was it a kitchen area? Was there food around?”

Lance shakes his head. “There was just water in a room off to the side. I could use some food, though.”

“Let’s go find some,” Keith says, and pushes himself to his feet.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Lance replies, flailing out his arms as if that could stop Keith from moving forward. Some of his water splashes over Keith’s face. “Where are you going?”

“To find some food,” Keith says. “I just said that.”

But Lance is climbing to his feet now too and squaring off against Keith in the dark. “Didn’t we agree we should just hang out for a little bit and make a plan?”

“Weren’t you the one who just wandered off to get us water?”

“Weren’t you the one who got us stuck out here in the first place?”

Keith’s mouth drops open. “ _What_?”

“Yeah,” says Lance, crossing his arms and leaning back against the crates. He jabs a finger towards Keith’s chest. “You got us stuck here.”

“How.” Keith has to pause and take a deep breath through his teeth. “How did _I_ get us stuck here.”

This very logical question seems to catch Lance off-guard entirely. He frowns. “I don’t know,” he says after a moment. “You didn’t believe me when I told you we were moving.”

“It was already too late by the time you’d noticed!” Keith protests.

“I know,” Lance admits, his shoulders drooping. “I’m so tired.”

For a moment Keith is caught between lingering annoyance and a strange bright growth of empathy. Lance is being a jackass, sure. But they’re both tired and hungry and if Keith doesn’t try to be the bigger person, neither of them will. Shiro would want him to attempt that, at least.

“Well, I’m going to find food,” Keith says, as evenly as he can muster. “I think we’ll both feel better after that. You can come or you can stay.”

The notion of being left alone here seems to put Lance on edge because he reaches out and snags Keith’s wrist at that. His grip is hard and firm, and Keith wonders if this is the same kind of clench of his fingers that he pulls the trigger of his bayard with. Keith looks down at his hand for a moment, examining the way his long fingers are closed over the girth of his wrist. Then he looks back up at Lance.

Lance is already looking at him, and when their eyes lock, Lance pulls back like he’s been bitten.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’ll come.”

Keith gives a single decisive nod. That’s good. With Lance in his sight, Keith can keep him close. With Lance is his sight, Keith can keep him safe. Priority number one. He readies his bayard and heads off into the darkness.

His headache has risen to a dull roar at his temples by the time they find the entrance to the cargo bay. The light seeping inside doesn’t help. The interior of Galra ships might be coolly lit in a dim purple but still having to face that after hours in the dark is a painful barrage against his pupils. He stands in the doorway for a moment or two, squinting, letting Lance pass him and survey up and down the hallway for signs of a threat before joining him.

Yet despite his sensitive headache the light is better than the stifling darkness of the cargo bay. Maybe they can be seen better out here, but they can also see better themselves. It doesn’t feel like anything could rise out of the darkness, from any direction, from any angle, at any second. Here if something gets them they’ll know it’s coming. Here, for better or for worse, all is plain to see.

Despite the water Keith just downed his throat still aches. He tries to turn his focus outwards, away from the ache in his bones from sleeping unsoundly on the floor, the emptiness of his stomach, the throbbing in his head. That kind of thing is useless right now. He has to figure out how to get them out of here, how to keep up their strength.

For a little while he allows Lance to lead. He doesn’t know where they’re going and neither does Lance, probably, but with Keith at the rear he can watch their backs. It’s impossible not to imagine the burn of laser fire between his shoulder blades when he knows that the sentries are making their constant rounds. That each step they take is a delicate dance that could lead them to discovery. Lance seems to have settled down from earlier, more caution guiding his steps, talking kept to a quiet minimum of warning Keith about incoming sentries. While Keith is grateful for it, it’s also unnerving.

Somehow Lance’s constant squawking and joking had made the situation feel light, but now there’s none of that left.

Keith tackles Lance behind a support, crouched over him, holding him there. He counts Lance’s breaths until he knows it’s okay to rise. Lance yanks Keith around a corner and Keith lets him box him in without protest. He can feel Lance’s warmth through the thick of his suit. They don’t make eye contact. Lance’s mouth is set in a grim line.

“Can we rest?” he finally asks, quiet, with a trembling hand pausing over Keith’s forearm.

Keith looks around. “Where?” he asks. But he can feel it in his muscles too. A drag, a fatigue. If something attacked him right now his reflexes would be dampened, his strength unreliable. They haven’t been walking for too long but hunger is shredding his stomach and his headache tinges things red at the edges of his vision.

“Here,” says Lance, and plops down in the shadow of a support column.

Keith, reluctantly, lets himself slide down the wall beside him. Their shoulders press together as he does.

There’s a moment of silence, and then Lance slumps over, helmet clacking against Keith’s shoulderpiece. He rests there.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Keith warns, though he’s ready to himself.

It’s not the first time Lance has leaned on his shoulder. The memory of the Castle-ship’s common room, warm and well-lit, pulls him into his head, into remembering the feel of Lance’s hair tickling his neck after a long day of training. He’d had the urge then, that time, of tilting over just a bit, of pressing his lips against the crown of Lance’s head. It seems too late for such a thing now. Lance doesn’t want anything like that. And it’s not the time.

Lance hums noncommittally in response. It’s more of a groan than anything. Keith’s chest aches, almost as physically as his head.

He makes a reach for optimism. “Shiro and the rest will be here to get us soon.”

Lance’s breath shudders against him. He licks his lips, a sticky, too-dry sound. And then he speaks.

“What if they’re not?” he asks quietly.

Keith doesn’t quite have an answer for that.

He shoves Lance off. Looks around, then climbs to his feet. Lance sways, and Keith stretches a hand out towards him. The bags beneath his eyes are dark now that Keith has a chance to see them properly.

“Then I’ll get you out of here,” Keith says.

The expression on Lance’s face as he grabs Keith’s hand isn’t a smile, not quite, but it’s close enough to make the hard pressure in Keith’s chest resolve, just a little bit.

“Let’s keep going this way,” Keith says after hoisting Lance to his feet. “This hallway can’t keep going on forever. We have to hit something eventually.”

Lance’s hand lingers on his own. Keith doesn’t have time for that. He doesn’t have time for the look that Lance is giving him, or the way he seems reluctant to pull back when Keith goes to turn. They’re trapped on a Galra ship, for crying out loud, and while he knows that the purpose of this mission is to patch up whatever had happened between them, he’s more preoccupied with getting off this goddamn ship.

He still lets himself take a long look at the way that Lance holds his gaze in the darkness before turning to move on.

He can’t be doing this, regardless of setting. Lance had made it pretty clear where he stood on the matter, which was why they were out here now. It’s not the thing that Keith should be focusing on right now, but with Lance looking at him like that it’s hard not to remember.

It wasn’t that Lance and Keith had been sitting next to each other on the couch talking in the lounge. They do that sometimes. Even when the rest of the team is in the room, as they had been then, sometimes Keith finds himself in this little closed-off box consisting of just him and Lance and no one else. In the beginning these things had been rocky but now it feels natural, to hang out with Lance like that. They’d just been chatting. Keith can’t even remember what about. But he can remember the way it had seemed easy to smile up at Lance, and how as their conversation had gone on the distance between them seemed to halve on its own, until their knees knocked together when they moved and Keith could feel the brush of Lance’s shoulder.

And when Lance had licked his lips like that, Keith had found his gaze dipping, sinking to settle on the way they glistened. They were slightly parted, and a little chapped, but looked appetizing somehow. When he’d dragged his eyes back up to meet Lance’s again he found that Lance was blinking at him languidly through a pair of dark eyelashes, his irises a disorienting shade of blue. Keith had parted his lips too then, sucked in air through them because it felt suddenly like he couldn’t breathe, like the oxygen supplies in the ship had somehow dwindled down to nothing while they weren’t paying attention.

Magnetism was at work there. Lance drifted closer. Keith closed his eyes.

_THUD_

Startled, Lance had thrown himself backwards, and Keith had whipped around towards the origin of the noise: the chattering mice that were fleeing from the seat of the couch, where they’d clearly just fallen. Keith went to turn his attention back to Lance but the interruption had left Lance with wide eyes.

“What the quiznak, dude?” he shouted.

“What? What did I do?” Keith asked, bewildered.

Lance huffed and crossed his arms. “Don’t act like you don’t know. Personal space, man!”

Oh. Is that what was happening here.

“It’s not like you were trying to get away from me,” Keith fired back.

“Don’t pin this on me—”

“But it _was_ on you—”

“Can we not?”

Pidge’s voice had broken in then, interrupting the both of them. Keith’s eyes widened. He’d forgotten that there were other people in the room, and when he looked, he realized they were all staring.

“We’re all having a good time here,” Hunk said. “Come on, guys.”

“Lance, Keith,” Shiro said, voice authoritative, “opposite ends of the couch. Now.”

Keith got up and threw himself on the couch beside Shiro, arms crossed, but Lance stood and stalked from the room, scrunching up his nose sticking his tongue out at Keith over his shoulder as he went. Keith flipped him off, even though he was already out of sight.

_That_ was the thing. That had happened. And things have been a little weird ever since. And that was why they’re stuck here.

It’s not like they have the time or the capacity for stuff like that right now anyway. But when Lance looks at him like that, Keith can’t keep his chest from constricting. He can’t pretend he doesn’t want. But he has to push that aside for now. Probably forever. Since Lance doesn’t want to even be close to him.

Keith grimaces. Turns away from Lance. Shakes all the thoughts out of his head. He tries to continue on, but he notices immediately that Lance isn’t following. With another check to their surroundings, he hisses, “C’mon, let’s get out of here!” but Lance’s full attention is on a door just to the right of where they had been resting.

“What do you think’s this way?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Keith replies as Lance reaches out towards it. It looks genuinely nondescript to Keith. It never would’ve held his attention for longer than it took to make sure it wasn’t harboring an immediate threat if Lance hadn’t gotten caught up by it.

There’s obviously no security measure on the door; it opens at a brush of Lance’s fingertips. From this angle Keith can’t see inside, especially with the way that the interior is in darkness and the light slants in around Lance. But the expression on Lance’s face transforms in an instant.

“Ha ha!” he crows, and darts inside before Keith can even open his mouth wide enough to tell him to hold on a second.

Keith follows, scowling, just as Lance flickers some lights on. Lance’s sudden elation now makes a lot of sense. A chest-height counter runs the perimeter of the mid-sized room, broken on the other end by a pair of heavy doors with small inlaid windows, frosted over from the opposite side. The island in the middle is home to an enormous basin, taps rising from its center above a series of drains. There’s a panel with a hose attached opposite Keith that looks achingly familiar in a way he’d never assumed such an innocuous piece of machinery might look. It reminds him of the food goo dispenser in the Castle-ship.

Lance found them a kitchen.

He’s over at the sink already, spinning all the spigots to let the water run freely from each tap, a huge grin on his face as he tears off his helmet and dunks his head under one. Keith wants to be concerned about what could be in that water, about the racket Lance is making now, but he can’t find it in himself when Lance raises his head again and shakes his hair out like a dog, splattering the surrounding area in droplets. So he goes over beside him and begins cupping water in his gloved hands, bringing it to his parched mouth, worries about potability be damned. He’ll die anyway if he gets too dehydrated.

By the time Keith thinks to look for Lance again, he’s already prodding at the food goo dispenser. He doesn’t seem to have a clue about what he’s doing because he ends up dumping a heap of an orangey-pink substance with a texture like brains and a rank odor that Keith can smell from all the way over here on the floor, but he catches some in his hand next and shoves it into his mouth.

“How is it?” Keith asks, leaning a hip against the counter. He takes in the way that the ends of Lance’s hair are freely dripping water onto the shoulders of his armor, rivulets of it running over his face, the wide and easy stance of his legs. The way he closes his eyes and tips back his head a little bit as he chews, the pleased smile that breaks over his lips, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows it down. He cracks open his eyes to grin at Keith, and despite everything, despite all of this, Keith’s breath catches in his throat.

“It’s disgusting.” Lance points the hose in his general direction. “Try it.”

Keith pushes off the counter and saunters over. They’re in too much of a rush to find plates he supposes so he just holds out a hand as Lance did. The substance is wet and mushy and plops onto the floor from between his fingers in the same manner that mud would.

“How do we even know that this is edible?” Keith asks.

“We don’t,” Lance says with a shrug, before giving himself another palmful. “But I’d rather die full than waste away in the hallways out there somewhere.”

It doesn’t taste as bad as it smells, somehow. Plus when he chokes it down Keith feels an instant sense of relief. His stomach stops gnawing on itself, the pain there depleted by the presence of nutrition. Or what might be nutrition. Though he supposes he has a better chance of surviving eating Galra food than Lance does. Maybe he should’ve eaten some first to see if anything happened to him before Lance had started shoveling it into his mouth.

Lance is holding the hose above his open and waiting jaw now, like a kid would a whipped cream can. Keith has to watch as some of it spills out of Lance’s mouth onto his chin. It’s gross.

“Give me that,” he says, half-laughing, and yanks the nozzle from Lance’s hands. Lance is too busy slowly chewing and swallowing to care.

Keith doesn’t eat his fill, but he eats enough, and then heads back to the sink to wash it down. He rinses his mouth while he’s at it, and then splashes water on his face. It’s more than refreshing. It’s revitalizing. He feels renew, reborn, in this span of mere moments. When Lance gives him a playful hip bump to get to the sink, Keith smirks and returns the motion, unbalancing a laughing Lance.

In retaliation Lance flicks him with water off of his hands.

Keith tries to shove past him to get at the tap.

Lance fights back.

Keith pushes harder.

Lance’s hands are on Keith’s waist.

Keith’s hands are on Lance’s chest.

They both stop, and notice.

Keith feels suddenly like he’s been nudged out of the airlock. The breath is ripped from his lungs as he looks up at Lance, his stomach swooping like he’s gravity-less. Lance’s hair is still damp with water droplets clinging to the tips of its chocolate curls. His eyelashes, too, have tiny drops perched among their thick strands, which draws Keith’s attention to those Caribbean Sea eyes. They’re looking back at him, meeting his gaze, darting up to his hair, slipping down towards his _nose-lips-chin_ for just a millisecond before pulling right back up.

Lance has got that little smile thing going on that he usually does. It makes Keith buoyant somehow. Lance also hasn’t moved his hands away from Keith’s body, resting lightly on the peaks of his hipbones. The whole thing makes Keith feel enclosed, but not in a bad way. In a way like everything that lies on the other side of Lance’s body, everything beyond this space, beyond this kitchen, is nonexistent. They could be standing in the middle of a sentry’s path. They could be out in the vacuum of open space. Keith wouldn’t know the difference.

He finds his elbows bending. The arm's length that Keith held Lance at halves in increments of careless unawareness. It’s like the hand of Lance’s that slips around to palm the small of his back. It’s his own fingers outstretched, sinking into lush silky hair, just to explore its thickness in his grip.

Lance’s eyes trail down again. This time they rest on Keith’s lips for a series of frantic heartbeats before lifting back up. Keith licks his lips, and heaves a shuddering breath. Keith closes in. His nose brushes against the side of Lance’s. His eyes slip shut.

_It’s not the time, it’s not the time, it’s not the time._ But--

Kissing Lance is a different experience from what he’s used to. There’s something playful about it, the same thing as in Lance’s grins and smirks. But it’s also slow. Not quite hesitant, but not bold either, taking its time. It starts as a closed-off thing, little more than a brush of lips, before Lance angles his head and Keith opens his mouth instinctively. Lance does too, and they slide against each other. They part with a sigh.

Lance doesn’t go very far. He only pulls away enough to look Keith in the eye. Somehow his hand has ended up on the curve of Keith’s jawline. His fingers are long and thin there, thumb stroking against his cheek.

“I’m going to do that again,” Lance tells him.

“Yeah,” agrees Keith, hoarsely.

They meet somewhere in the middle with closed eyes and grasping hands. Keith could be in zero G right now, for where his head is. This is a kind of bliss he’s found right here, without hunger and thirst, in Lance’s embrace. In this moment nothing else matters but kissing back.

“Why didn’t we do this before?” Lance asks between soft kisses pressed to Keith’s lips.

“You’re asking me?” Keith replies breathlessly, eyes still closed, chasing Lance’s lips.

His tongue slips into Lance’s mouth next, cutting him off before he can retort. It’s a heady feeling. Dizzying. Keith pushes himself as close to Lance’s body as he damn well can with these suits between them. It’s been a desperate struggle to get here and now they’ve reached an agreement. It’s peaceful. It’s comfortable. It’s good.

And then it shatters with the blast of laser guns and the screaming of rent metal.

Keith’s got his bayard activated before he can even fully turn to face his threat, shield thrust out to cover Lance’s vitals. No other shots come, though, just the rhythmic pounding of many sentry boots against the floor. The perimeter of the room floods with them, way more than he could reasonably take on, guns trained right at Keith and Lance’s heads, as a battle-ready Galra comes marching into the room.

Keith clenches his teeth. Stupid, _stupid_. He’d gotten distracted. Caught up. Impatient. He has to protect Lance. He has to make sure Lance doesn’t end up like Shiro.

“Drop your weapons,” the Galra commands.

So Keith surges, blade up, ready to bring it down to cleave the alien in two when

_Bang_.

Keith freezes. A ragged breath tears itself from his chest before he can turn around to look at Lance. Lance, who is wide-eyed with fear, his fingers trembling on his bayard. Not inches from his hip, a spot in the counter smokes from a recent impact. _That could have been Lance_. That could have been Lance’s skin, Lance’s flesh, with a burning hole right through it. Lance could be smoking from the gut, bleeding freely. Lance could be dead.

Keith goes instantly limp. Retracts his bayard. Drops his arms. He retreats up against the counter, his shoulder knocking into Lance’s, who has retracted his bayard as well. With big, predictable movements he picks his helmet back up from where it laid forgotten on the counter and puts it back on, watching out of the corner of his eye to make sure Lance does the same. He wants all the protection he can get.

“You’re not going to need those where you’re going,” the Galra laughs. “Hands behind your back.”

Lance hesitates. He glances at Keith, but Keith just gives a single nod. Maybe right now it’s better to be a Galra captive than to be dead. An ache springs in Keith’s chest when he thinks of the atrocities Shiro went through, and how this is all his fault, and how he should be able to get them out of this situation. But he pushes that down and steps forward, hands held unthreateningly behind him.

There’s a clink and a buzz and his wrists are pulled taut. He glares at the Galra before him the entire time. He has to fight every instinct to tear out his throat with his blade. He has to get Lance out of here alive.

“Let’s go,” says the Galra. The sentries begin to flood out of the room, but he stares back at Keith for a moment before turning on his heel and leaving. Keith is shoved after him with the barrel of a laser gun, but refuses to stumble forward until Lance is in his sight, leaving in front of him.

There’s a sentry at each of his shoulders. One right behind him. And one before Lance. Others march in front and behind but none between the two of them. It’s not much. But it’s something. They’re approaching the intersection of the small offshoot hallway and the larger main corridor. Their caravan is turning right, and Keith sees his opportunity.

“Three,” says Keith, and watches Lance’s spine straighten almost imperceptibly before him.

“Two,” he says, and Lance’s hands are flexing, stretching, from where they were just curled into fists.

“One.”

Lance hits the ground at about the same time the sentry who had been at Keith’s back does. The difference is Lance threw himself down, whereas the sentry’s rendezvous with gravity had not been premeditated by anyone other than a backwards kick from Keith. But then Keith is next on the ground, activating his bayard so it stabs through the sentry. A few shots fired at the first sign of movement have hit the other sentries, knocking them out. The cons of significantly outnumbering your opponent, Keith supposes as he rolls off to the left, taking cover as best he can behind a wall support.

In the next moment Lance is pressed up against him.

“Hurry, hurry,” he hisses, turning his back towards Keith.

“I can’t do anything if you keep wriggling like that,” Keith snaps, but he’s already got his back turned, clumsily trying to connect the edge of his bayard’s blade to the power keeping the handcuffs together. It’s a strong bond, but his bayard is a legendary weapon. It _should_ work, and hopefully before those shots being fired in their direction round that corner.

“Get them!” shouts the Galra in charge, and Keith knows they’re out of time. Sentries approach, four or five laser guns trained on their heads. Keith braces himself.

_Lance_.

Shots ring out.

The sentries fall. So do the ones after them, each decommissioned by a clean shot in the chest. None more follow when they realize the two of them have firepower, and Lance cackles madly. He’s probably spewing one-liners but Keith is far too focused now on trying to open up his handcuffs with his own sword to pay proper attention.

He finally gets it open and with a sigh of relief he hops to his feet, ready to charge out and take the rest down, but Lance grabs his wrist with his free hand.

“Where are you going?” Lance asks.

“To attack!” Keith replies.

“Calm down dude, we’re in a deadlock,” Lance replies. “We can’t just charge out there. They’ll shoot us.”

As if to prove his point, laser fire goes whizzing by.

“So what do we do then?” Keith snaps.

Lance slips his grip from Keith’s wrist to his hand, grasping it between his long fingers. Looking up at him, he brings it to his mouth and holds it there, pressing his lips against it. Keith feels a strange flush of affection that’s so contrary to the moment that it almost hurts.

But the question remains unanswered when the Galra bellows, “I said _go get them_!”

They have about three seconds of the sounds of approaching footsteps before the entire troop of remaining sentries comes marching into view, but Lance is already firing at that point, and Keith is slashing. They’ve both got their shields up. Keith knows Lance is a crack shot so he doesn’t bother with staying out of his way. He plows into the group, sword swinging. Sentries fall before them, but there are more at their backs. Keith feels the heat of laser fire caught again and again by his shield, and prays that he doesn’t misstep.

The Galra in charge catches his eye. He’s not fighting. But he’s not just standing around either. He’s holding what’s the futuristic space version of a walkie talkie and barking into it. Sending for backup. Requesting reinforcements. That needs to stop.

Keith can leave this for Lance. He trusts him to deal with this. He fights a path through the swarming sentries and charges towards the Galra.

It’s an easy victory. The Galra is mostly defenseless except for the gun that he raised at the last second when he saw Keith barreling towards him. He doesn’t get the chance to fire before Keith’s sword knocks against the side of his helmet, throwing him across the hall, unconscious. Keith immediately spins, throwing his shield back up and going after the remaining sentries.

That’s about when the reinforcements appear, from down the hallway with the kitchen door. There aren’t too many, but it’s enough that Keith finds himself backed away from the entrance to the hallway, on the opposite end from where Lance stands. He can see him when he lets himself pause in the chaos long enough. He’s holding his own, but he’s getting farther and farther away, taking cover behind columns as more sentries push forward.

“Lance!” Keith calls into his helmet over the fray between swings of his blade. “Hanging in there?”

“Of course!” is the response, but it sounds strained. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

Keith strains, redoubling his attack. “Any suggestions?” he asks. It’s half-rhetorical. In his mind, he’s going to keep slashing until every sentry between him and Lance has been mowed down.

Lance only glances up for a moment. There’s a pause before his response, filled with laser fire and the crunch of metal giving under a blade.

“Split up!” he calls back.

“What?” Keith cleaves a sentry in two.

“Split up!” Lance repeats. “Meet me in the cargo hold!”

And before Keith can tell him what an awful, terrible, _stupid_ idea that is, Lance has disappeared around a corner, chased by sentries. His last glimpse of him is as a blue streak firing wildly over his shoulder.

“ _Lance_ !” Keith tries again, but he’s gone. _Fuck_. Keith takes it out on the nearest sentry.

He considers going after him for a moment. Charges forward, cutting through the ranks like he’s about to. But he can see how the sentries have been thinned now. What would be better is if he draws the rest away from Lance. Drag them the opposite direction. Then circle back and make sure Lance is okay. _Meet me in the cargo hold_.

He breaks. He runs. There is laser fire on his heels but he’s going, he’s getting out of there. He prays that their aim is bad, that his armor can take the brunt of a direct hit. He turns a corner, then two. He inhales burning breaths.

But mostly, he hopes that Lance is okay.


	3. PART 3

Keith’s been on this ship for twelve goddamn hours and he doesn’t know if he’s going to survive until the thirteenth. 

 

His lungs are  _ burning _ . He doesn’t know how long he’s been running. He can’t imagine how big this ship is, because he’s been at it for a long time and he  _ thinks _ he hasn’t been going in circles. But honestly, he has no idea where he’s going. All the dark hallways look the same. None of them contain Lance. 

 

Keith thinks to try and keep track of the turns he’s made, but by that point he has to be far away from where he started. He tallies four left turns and a long hallway from that point anyway, though it still gives him no sense of direction, and it’s about at that point that the sirens start in. Loud and raucous, they pound at his temples. His body is dragging, he can feel the fatigue in his feet and in his knees like weights, and the noise sends an unsettling vibration through him that has him unbalanced.

 

He knows what those sirens are for. They’re not an alarm clock. This isn’t a safety drill. They’re announcing visitors, of the unwelcomed kind. Which happens, unfortunately, to be exactly what he is. The entire ship must be on standby, on lockdown, the place crawling with sentries and soldiers searching for him and Lance.

 

He has to find Lance first.

 

His surroundings are unfamiliar, but there are lots of parts of vast Galra ships that look similar and parts that look different when your senses are flooded with adrenaline and exhaustion. He could really be anywhere on the ship, at this point. Maybe he’s been here before. Maybe he’s moving farther and farther away from his goal with each step. He somehow finds the mental capacity to wish that the Galra blood in his veins came with something useful, like the intrinsic ability to navigate Galra ships, but he doesn’t have anything like that.

 

A pair of sentries spots him as he careens around a corner, almost directly into their pointed guns. They don’t have time to pull the triggers before Keith is slashing. He severs one into two pieces at the waist. Spins. Plunges the point of his bayard into the other’s chest. Both crackle with electricity and slump to the ground.

 

It’s not good. Leaving a trail of broken sentries is not good. They can probably track his movements based on that, so he takes a few winding turns to potentially throw any pursuers off. But that isn’t good either, because if he was lost before, he has absolutely no idea now where he came from, or where he’s going. He just keeps running, almost aimlessly. Despite the problem of the sentries, he’s not actively trying to hide from them either. He can take them, he knows.

 

Even if one does spot him from behind and take a few shots at him before he can spin around and drive his bayard through its abdomen. One lucky shot hits him in the shoulder, but he barely feels it. Instead he switches his bayard to his other hand and keeps running, running.

 

It feels like panic-filled eons before Keith spots something familiar. This hallway is a little bit wider, and this intersection looks like one he’s been to before. He’s been lucky, he realizes, managing to get here, though it took too long. He all but sprints down the corridor to where he knows the wide arch of the cargo bay door is, gasping for breath. He can only hope that Lance has made it there.

 

Lance has. Keith sees him.

 

Keith sees him in an awkward slump against the frame of the arch, his legs splayed at exhausted angles, sitting at the center of a dark splatter.

 

“Lance!” Keith cries, and somehow speeds up despite the desperate drag in his limbs.

 

Lance chuckles a tight laugh into his comms. “Hey, man.”

 

Keith’s stomach clenches in empathetic pain as he runs closer. From here he can see the blood, the places where Lance’s armor has been dented in against his calf and glistens red around the edges. He’s splattered in more blood than just his own, if the bluish color of it is anything to go by, but his is absolutely in the mix as well, flowing from more than one puncture on his person. As he reaches Lance, Keith drags his eyes up Lance’s body to assess the damage, and then finally comes to rest on his face, glistening with sweat but grinning.

 

“Took you long enough,” Lance says. His tone is light but his voice shakes.

 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” is how Keith responds, falling to his knees beside him to get a closer look. “We’ve gotta get you out of here.”

 

Lance laughs. “Where to?”

 

“I don’t  _ know _ , Lance,” Keith replies. He doesn’t. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know where to go, or what to do, or how to deal with the fact that Lance is bleeding freely in front of him. He can’t care for his wounds or escape to do so later. He can only stare at Lance, the blaring sirens echoing between his ears, terror threatening to swallow him whole.

 

“Let’s get inside,” Keith says, jerking his head towards the interior of the cargo hold. If they can hide again, maybe Keith can wash out Lance’s wounds and find some cloth to bandage him up with. “Can you walk?”

 

“Probably, but you can always feel free to carry me,” Lance says with a wink, and begins struggling to sit up.

 

Keith chokes on his panic. “Save that for later.”

 

He helps Lance into a standing position, which doesn’t seem to help the bleeding. Lance’s armor is slick with it, rivulets running down his shins, his hair soaked through under his helmet. Keith doesn’t care that his own hands are now sticky and red.

 

“What happened?” Keith asks. Lance leans against him heavily, an arm clinging to his shoulders, so Keith threads his own arm around Lance’s waist and offers support.

 

“Firefight,” Lance answers simply, and takes a first stumbling step, teetering into Keith. “You should see the other guys.”

 

Keith takes the step with him. Lance really isn’t in good shape to move right now, he can tell that much. But they have to get out of here before any more Galra come find them. And the sirens, all the flashing lights, aren’t helping anything.

 

They’re about to step into the shadows of the cargo hold when Keith first smells it. He freezes.

 

“What?” asks Lance. The sound of his breathing is labored in Keith’s ear.

 

Keith twists his neck to look back out towards the hallway. It’s hard to see in the dark, the lights no more or less glowing purple for it, but a hint of hazy gray billows oppressively against the ceiling, like warning clouds portending a storm. Lance follows his gaze, and Keith feels the realization in him as a frightened straightening of his spine.

 

“I don’t think those sirens are for us,” Lance says.

 

Suddenly the cargo hold, with its dark dead ends, its narrow labyrinthine paths, its potentially flammable contents, is the last place Keith wants to be. They need to be anywhere but here.

 

“At least they’re not going to be bothering with us anymore,” Keith says, and turns Lance around so that they’re facing back the way they came. Together they take a few staggering steps.

 

“What now?” Lance asks. There’s something pulled taut in his voice and it almost physically pains Keith to hear it.  

 

Keith evaluates the smoke. It’s coming from down the passageway, so he turns them towards the other direction. “Away from the fire.”

 

Lance opens his mouth to respond, but before he can even begin the crackle of an announcement system cuts through the siren scream.

 

“All personnel evacuate immediately,” a deep Galra voice booms around them. “The fire has spread through the interior of the ship. There are no pods currently docked. Proceed to the fighter crafts in hangar 6. Thank you.”

 

“Well that’s great,” Lance says as the sirens flood back in.

 

Keith agrees with his sentiment. There’s no way they’re getting off this ship if that’s the case. If there really are no pods anywhere, and the only way off is some fighters. Every Galra on the whole ship will be scrambling to get on one of those. There won’t be a good time for two stowaways, one injured, to sneak on. Not to mention that if Keith can see smoke, the fire is definitely crawling along towards them. Maybe in the floor, in the walls, in the ceiling. A fire doubles in size every minute. 

 

“Do you think that’s ours?” Lance says. 

 

“Our what?” 

 

“Our fire.”

 

Keith thinks of a few lucky shots and a Galra burning as it ran by. He curses under his breath. Shouldn’t a civilization capable of spaceflight for over 10,000 years have a better fire suppression system? “It would be, wouldn’t it.”

 

Gritting his teeth, Keith tightens his grip on Lance’s waist and tries to speed up, but Lance puts weight on his injured leg and his breath hitches. Keith takes a deep breath and tries to clear his head.

 

Think. Think. Patience yields focus. How can he think when his head throbs in time with the blaring of the alarm, when Lance is bleeding against him?

 

“Hey, Keith,” Lance says. His tone is quiet but it slashes straight through the sounds of the sirens, straight through any concentration Keith has built up. Keith glances at him and finds that the smoke has thickened around them, enough so that he can see it past Lance’s head.

 

“What?” Keith says. It comes out a little more testy than he intended, especially when Lance’s face is looking so grim like that through the glass of his faceplate.

 

“I think you should…,” Lance starts, and then stops. His mouth pulls into a thin line. He looks Keith dead in the eye. “I think you should leave me.”

 

“What?” Keith’s body seems to react before he can, and he accidentally jerks Lance closer with their next step, as though the physical hold on him could stop him from having thoughts like that. Lance winces when the motion jostles his wounds, but Keith is too testy to care. “No way.”

 

“Come on, Keith,” Lance says, letting enough of his usual whine back in his voice to calm Keith’s bristling, just slightly. “I’m holding you back. You can get out of here.”

 

“Stop talking,” Keith growls, and turns forward to try and block further conversation on the topic.

 

But Lance doesn’t move. He sighs. “What if you go and come back for me?”

 

Keith can see right through that. If he leaves now, no matter what else happens, all he’s going to come back to find is the burnt-out shell of a spaceship. None of Lance will be left to come back for. He can’t have that. He won’t.

 

“Shut up, Lance,” Keith replies. “Save your breath.”

 

Keith makes another attempt at forward motion, but Lance tugs him, harder than he should be able to, really. Keith looks back questioningly, and finds Lance staring at him. “Keith, please. We can’t both make it out of here.” He reaches up with his free hand and touches the side of Keith’s helmet. “I’ll be just fine here knowing that you made it out.”

 

“Lance,  _ stop _ !” Keith shouts, and swats away his hand. “I’m  _ not  _ leaving you.”

 

The sirens cut out again. “All passengers please report to hangar 6 immediately. The fire will reach the fuel tanks in approximately 60 ticks. Thank you.”  

 

Lance’s eyes are wide and terrified when Keith meets them again. Neither of them need a further explanation on that. The ship isn’t going to exist in another minute or two, and as long as they’re on it, their fate is tied to it. “Keith,  _ go _ .”

 

“ _ No _ !”

 

Something like bile is creeping up Keith’s throat. Maybe their suits will protect them, maybe they’ll be okay, maybe…maybe—

 

“55 ticks,” the voice announces.

 

Keith extracts himself from Lance’s arms and turns his back towards him, heart pounding. He thinks for a second as he lets go that Lance’s grip tightens infinitesimally before he releases him. Lance doesn’t want to die.

 

Keith doesn’t want Lance to die either. He crouches, back to Lance.

 

“Get on my back,” he says.

 

“Keith, get out—”

 

“ _ Get on my back _ !” Keith shouts, and he thinks he hears the tiniest sniffle over their comms.

 

“50 ticks.”

 

Lance throws his weight against Keith. Keith catches his thighs and stands, Lance hooking his arms around his shoulders and his legs around his waist.

 

“You barely weigh anything,” Keith mutters, and then takes off in the best semblance of a jog he can possibly do.

 

“Where are we going?” Lance asks.

 

“Anywhere,” Keith says. “Out.”

 

“Of the ship? How?”

 

“We’ll do better out in open space than here,” Keith replies. “Start calling for Red.”

 

Lance moans, probably in response to the jostling of his wounds. “She never listened to me like she did for you.”

 

“40 ticks.”

 

“Just do it!” Keith says. “Just try.”

 

If they’re near a cargo hold, they’ve got to be near the outside edge of the ship. There’s a door up ahead that looks like it could be a hatch. Keith doubles his pace, not allowing himself to feel Lance’s weight against his back, not allowing the burn in his lungs and his legs, the fear that’s making all the hair on the body stand on end. His singular focus is that door.

 

“35 ticks.”

 

Keith slams his hand against the hatch’s control panel. It slides open too slow. He turns around so he can prod Lance into the intermediate chamber through the widening opening, and then stumbles inside himself and slams on the button to shut the door and begin the process of draining the room of air.

 

“There are holes in my suit,” Lance notes absently.

 

“In your helmet?” Keith asks, the rate of his heartbeat stuttering.

 

Lance shakes his head.

 

“Then you’ll survive,” Keith says. 

 

Keith doesn’t know if that’s true. He learned about exposure at the Garrison. They all did. About ebullism and decompression sickness and anoxia and hypoxia. How you pass out after 14 seconds and that’s when the you can feel your saliva boiling on your tongue. But it isn’t the heat or the cold that kills you first, it’s the lack of oxygen. Lance has his helmet, so that’s not a concern. It’s the holes in his suit exposing his skin to the vacuum, devoid of pressure, that’ll get him. Keith surveys Lance’s suit one more time.

 

“Put on my leg guards and chestplate,” Keith says, wrangling the parts off his own body. He has his unmarred suit underneath, and he prays the pieces will seal around the places where Lance’s own has split. 

 

“10 ticks,” comes the muffled announcement.

 

Lance struggles with the armor pieces that Keith tosses at him. Keith reaches over to shove one over his shin and then shifts the one on Lance’s chest. Lance hisses a curse in the process, but Keith would rather have him uncomfortable now than his body swelling when the liquids in his body evaporate inside of him.

 

Keith is so worried about protecting Lance that he barely notices the outer door slide open, until Lance is suddenly clinging to his front and they’re shot out into space. Keith doesn’t let his brain catch up, instead acting on instinct, turning his jetpack on and blasting them as far away from the ship as it will possibly take them. This  _ would _ be his choice, flames or open space. 

 

_ Red, please, if you hear me _ , Keith begs silently.  _ I need you. I’m sorry _ . 

 

The explosion is spectacular, in an objective way. Keith only has a moment to watch the bright flash of light from it until the wave of heat from it hits them. Lance moans in pain, but his arms stay around Keith’s body. Keith holds him close.

 

He closes his eyes.  _ Red, come on _ . 

 

“Isn’t this romantic?” Lance interrupts. 

 

Keith’s eyes snap open. Lance is looking at him. He’s got a smile on but his eyebrows are low, like the teeth his lips are stretched over are gritted. 

 

“How is this romantic?” Keith snaps, out of fear more than irritation. 

 

“We made out on a Galra ship and now we’re cuddling in space.” Lance’s smile wavers. 

 

“You’re hurt.”

 

“But I got to show you how I feel.”

 

Keith swallows thickly. Something is lodged in his throat, and he can’t get it out. 

 

“Why’d you have to be such an ass about it though?” Keith grumbles, as if to distract himself. Definitely to distract Lance, at least. 

 

“Hah,” Lance laughs weakly. “Maybe I was scared. I wanted your attention for so long, and you didn’t even know my name for most of it.” 

 

Keith inhales sharply, aware that this is something he can only do for the duration of how long his flight suit will continue to function, and who knows how long that could be. For Lance, it’s probably less. He chooses to focus on the conversation instead of that. “How long…?”

 

“Since I met you at the Garrison? I don’t know.” Lance averts his eyes, though the strained smile still sits on his mouth.

 

Keith tries to pull him tighter, somehow. He wants their bodies to meld together, he wants the gravity of their masses to keep them permanently attached. He wants to take Lance’s wounds onto his own body and feel them burn with the same intensity that the lining of his lungs burns with. 

 

“That’s a long time,” is the only thing Keith can think of to say, and something inside his voice is scratching at it, scrabbling to break free.

 

“I was scared,” Lance says again. “Aren’t you?”

 

“Yeah,” Keith says. “I am.”

 

He lifts his head and knocks the faceplates of their helmets together. He hopes that his meaning translates.

 

Lance is the one who says it out loud though. 

 

“Wish I could kiss you right now.”

 

“You can,” Keith says. “As soon as we get back to the castle.”

 

Lance laughs again, weaker this time. “I don’t think I’m getting back to the castle, Keith.”

 

“Shut up,” Keith growls, but in his head he’s praying.  _ Red, please _ .

 

Lance doesn’t seem to share his concern, smiling as he looks at him. “You’d better start being nicer to me. What if the last words you ever say to me are ‘shut up?’”

 

Keith wraps his arms tighter and stares into Lance’s eyes. He honestly believes he’s going to die right now. He’s already accepted it, though his arms still cling back to Keith. Even though his forehead is drenched in sweat and blood and the tension is clear in his jaw his smile looks gentle, serene, so different from the shit-eating grin he usually wears. He tips his head back and looks at the stars. 

 

“Tell Allura to take good care of Blue for me,” Lance says. “You can have my jacket, if you want.”

 

“I don’t want your jacket, Lance,” Keith replies.

 

Lance seems to shrug. “Your loss. Give it to Pidge then.” He looks contemplative. “She can have her headphones back too I g--.”

 

“Wait,  _ shh _ .” Keith looks around. All he sees is stars and swirls of distant galaxies, but--

 

“What did I just say about being nice to me?” Lance asks. His grip around Keith’s back is weakening and his eyes are closed. Keith clutches him closer instinctively but is wholly otherwise preoccupied.

 

“Seriously, Lance, shh,” he says. “Do you hear that?”

 

“Hear what?” Lance asks, opening his eyes. “I think you’re losing it, buddy.”

 

Keith’s entire body goes stiff as he strains to hear. It’s not for another moment that he realizes what he’s listening to isn’t a sound. It’s an idea in his head. 

 

He lets his head drop onto Lance’s chest and breathes out a sigh of relief. His eyes fill with tears. 

 

“Hang in there, Lance,” he says. “Red’s coming.” 

 

“Oh,  _ is _ she now?” Lance replies, exasperation mingling with relief in his voice. But his words are quiet, weak. Keith gives him a gentle shake. 

 

“Stay with me,” he says. “Goddammit, don’t close your eyes like that. Lance. Come on.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance rasps. 

 

“Come on, come on,” Keith begs. He doesn’t know if he’s talking to Lance or to Red. Probably to both. 

 

Lance gives him a grunt. Keith watches his face through his faceplate, his eyes closing, his mouth twisting in pain. His eyebrows have come down low to give him the impression of someone bearing a tremendous weight. 

 

Keith’s eyes focus back out. Because suddenly, reflected in the glass of Lance’s faceplate, is an enormous red robot lion. 

 

“Lance, Lance!” Keith calls, as he uses his jetpack to swing Lance around and towards Red. “She’s here. You’re gonna be fine.”

 

Lance groans. 

 

Red stares down Keith for a moment without opening her mouth. He feels strangely contrite, humbled, as he bows his head before her. He knows what happened wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t help what he needed to do. But he does care about Red. So much. And he didn’t intend to abandon her.

 

Keith’s heart pounds in his chest. His throat feels choked with panic. He tries to breathe, and finds that he can’t. He looks up at Red. 

 

His message must reach her, finally,  _ finally _ , because she stretches her maw open. Keith grins at her, wide and fierce, and carries Lance inside.

 

Red takes off the moment they’re in there. Keith has no idea where they are, but he figures she must, and she must know how to get back to the castle from here, so he trusts her to do that. In the meantime he lays Lance flat against the floor and takes off his helmet. 

 

Lance intakes a shaky breath, a shallow gasp, but doesn’t open his eyes. 

 

“Lance?” Keith asks, voice quivering, shaking fingers tugging at the edges of his armor. 

 

There’s no response. 

 

Off, off. He has to get the armor off, has to stop the bleeding. Keith manages to wrangle Lance’s chestplate over his head and stares down at the gaping wound. Nestled right at the bottom of his ribcage, his skin and the armor is slick with red. Keith curses, loudly, and knows there’s a first aid kit in here somewhere but he doesn’t really know the first thing about closing up a wound like this. His Garrison first aid training seems woefully distant right now. 

 

It wouldn’t do for him to die now. They’ve come this far.  _ Hurry, Red _ , Keith begs. 

 

Keith himself is running on pure adrenaline at this point. There’s not a part of his body that doesn’t ache deeply, not a single place where he doesn’t feel like he’s been buried in hot coals. His throat and mouth are dry and scratchy and he coughs when he breathes. His eyes itch and burn with exhaustion. His stomach rolls. His head aches. 

 

But Lance is unconscious before him. His eyes are closed. His lips are blue, matching the accents on his uniform, and Keith has never hated the color more. Keith finds himself just as frozen. 

 

Lance might actually die here. So close to safety. So close to  _ home _ .  _ He could lose Lance _ . 

 

Keith swallows a sob, hard and crashing in his diaphragm. He tears off his own helmet. Leans in close, until he can feel the flutter of Lance’s faint breath against his nose. A teardrop lands on Lance’s cheek. 

 

Lance’s lips are cold where Keith touches them. 

 

Their stumble into the Castle-ship, when they arrive moments later, is a blur of red and blue. Distantly Keith can feel his arms straining as he carries Lance cradled to his chest. He hears shouting and realizes that it’s his own voice. He’s met in the hangar by the rest of the team, their panic-stricken faces swirling together in his mind as he tries to run past them towards the healing pods with Lance in his arms. He almost doesn’t let go when Shiro comes to take him, strong arms lifting Lance out of Keith’s grip.

 

“I’ve got him,” Shiro tells Keith.

 

“He’s  _ dying _ ,” Keith finds himself sobbing.

 

Shiro takes Lance away, and Keith’s knees buckle under himself. Around him, whispers of  _ Is he already— _ become cries of Keith’s name. He falls to the ground. His vision goes dark, and he doesn’t get up. 

 

* * *

 

Keith feels cold. 

 

He tries to say something, a name maybe, but he chokes on the frost in his mouth. When the panel before him slides open, and whatever force had been keeping him upright drains from his muscles, he staggers instinctively forward and it takes his entire concentration to keep his knees and ankles beneath his body. 

 

He stumbles on quivering legs, and opens his eyes. 

 

Shiro stands before him, offering his left arm for support. Keith takes it.

 

Keith’s tongue has thawed.  “Lance,” he says.

 

Shiro gently turns him towards a second healing pod. Lance is suspended inside, his wounds obstructed from view by the form-fitting white suit designed for the healing process. They match, Lance and Keith. 

 

Keith spills from Shiro’s arms and lands palms-first against the glass surface of the pod. Lance’s face is blank. Calm. Empty. Something wrenches at Keith’s organs, like hooks tearing in and ripping out fresh blood. 

 

“Is he--?” 

 

“He’s fine,” Shiro says, settling a hand on his shoulder, and Keith grips it for support when the tension flushes out of his muscles in relief. “He needs a few more vargas, but he’s fine.”

 

Keith lets himself slowly sink to his knees now, and Shiro helps lower him gently. 

 

Shiro sits with him for a little while, but when it becomes obvious that Keith isn’t budging off the ground until Lance emerges from his pod, Shiro leaves to bring him food and some water. Eventually Keith drifts off with his forehead pressed against its glass surface, and when he wakes it’s to Pidge and Hunk coming in because Lance’s readouts are optimistic. He’s finished. 

 

When Lance falls out, it’s to Hunk, and they hug, laughing. Pidge is on him in a second, berating him for his stupidity but crying as she does. Shiro, Allura, and Coran stand to the side and exude warmth, waiting their turns to embrace him.

 

Keith meets Lance’s eyes and allows him a smile, before slipping out the door to rest.

 

* * *

 

Keith is sitting in the common room when Lance finds him. He has a screen of flight maneuvers open but he’s not really looking at it. Instead he’s breathing, and being grateful that he can.

 

“Hey,” Lance says, and sits down next to him. He fidgets until Keith looks up at him, and then freezes. “Do you wanna talk about what happened out there? Or nah?”

 

Keith takes a long look at Lance. At his green jacket and his perfectly-combed hair and the smooth skin of his face. The universe almost lost this person.  _ Keith  _ almost lost this person.

 

He looks away.

 

“What’s there to talk about?” he asks.

 

“I mean, I kinda confessed to you,” Lance says. “I thought you were into me too but if you wanna just let it go—”

 

“No,” Keith says quickly, without even realizing he’s saying it.

 

Lance leans forward into his line of sight, an attempt at eye-contact. “No?”

 

“No…,” Keith says, slower this time, hesitant. “I don’t want to let it go.”

 

“Oh.” Lance leans back again, so Keith glances over. He’s blushing, Lance, the tips of his ears turning a little ruddy too. “Oh, okay. Yeah. Me neither.”

 

There’s a moment of silence, and Keith counts the frantic beats of his heart.

 

“Do you feel better?” he asks lamely.

 

“I’m a little tired,” Lance says. “Saving the day and almost dying takes a lot out of you, you know.” 

 

“Wanna go to bed?” Keith asks, and it’s clear he didn’t think his phrasing through when both of Lance’s eyebrows shoot up. 

 

“Together?”

 

“Uh, I mean….” Keith turns away, and scratches the back of his neck. “Why not?”

 

Lance stands and holds a hand out towards Keith. “If you think you’re getting laid you’re wrong. I’m exhausted.”

 

Keith does his best not to splutter, since Lance is standing there looking cocky and smug and he can’t let Lance win, even if they’ve apparently moved beyond whatever was going on between them before. Instead Keith takes his hand and hauls himself up, pausing to plant a kiss against Lance’s cheek. 

 

“That can wait,” he says, and strides past Lance, though he keeps their fingers locked together. 

 

The way Lance’s arm yanks at the end of Keith’s hand makes him smile. Lance catches up and slides the same arm around Keith’s waist, pulling him in. 

 

“This is gonna be the best sleepover ever,” Lance laughs in his ear.

 

When Lance insists on being big spoon, Keith doesn’t mind. The way Lance’s chest curls and fits against his spine feels more soothing than the healing pod, and the way his breathing evens out to something deep and warm against Keith’s neck reminds him of how they’re both, somehow, alive. Lance’s hand is splayed open against Keith’s chest. Keith can feel it rise and fall with the motions of his own breathing.

 

He smiles to himself, and falls asleep. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on [twitter](https://twitter.com/epiproctan) and [tumblr](http://epiproctan.tumblr.com/)


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